One of my all-time favorite songs ever is “As the World Falls Down” by David Bowie from the movie Labyrinth. The reasons for this are vast and varied. And since my family’s annual Hallowe’en party (this year, cleverly entitled Masquerade 2018) is coming up this weekend, I thought I’d choose a song for today that has to do with a costume ball. Well, sort of a costume ball. In the movie, this song happens during what appears to be a masque. (And I do love a good masque. There should be more of them near me. Someone please make that happen.)

And for several years one of my brothers and I attended a masked ball in Los Angeles entitled the Labyrinth of Jareth, which was originally based on the movie but then evolved into its own extraordinary world. And at this event, each night, several of the songs from the movie’s soundtrack could be heard in the various ballrooms, but one thing remained constant, which was that this song (Bowie’s original version) would play at a certain time in each ballroom, and then everyone would find someone to waltz with for a few minutes. It was a really interesting experience, because even if you didn’t already have someone to dance with, you would probably find someone, or someone would find you. And maybe you would become friends with that person (that happened to me in one instance) and maybe you would never see them again, not even at the event (that’s happened to me too).

So to my friends Tara and Margo and James and Yolanda and Leonard and Sarah and Adrienne and to my brother Mo: I hope you all, especially, will enjoy this. It’s not Bowie’s version (which remains my favorite), but it’s a pretty good one.

So what else is going on? Well, it’s early voting time here where I live, so I’m gearing up for that because for heaven’s sake, why wouldn’t someone exercise their right to an opinion? Srsly. Go out and make the world better, y’all.

Also, my Kickstarter project has just 19 days left to meet its goal. We’re almost 75% of the way there! Thank you to everyone who has joined on. If you haven’t yet, now is a good time. If we get to 80%, I’ll announce the extremely marvelous perks for some stretch goals. And either way, I hope you’ll share the link to the project with people you know who like poetry or like my writing or like supporting indie artists. Because that’s good for your karma, yo, and we need more art in the world.

Otherwise I’ve got some grading to do and some KS updates to write and some front and back matter for the new book to finish and the new galleys for the 3rd edition of FINIS. to proof. Woot! Busy night!

I hope yours is awesome.